Since the inception of abstract art in the early 20th century, viewers have had alternative routes to follow when presented with the task of elucidating the meaning of abstract paintings.
On one hand, there is the notion of abstract art as the visual expression of deep, fundamental, even spiritual meaning, and on the other hand, a notion of abstract art as an expression of the simple materiality of painting. The first route seeks to understand the artist’s intentions to craft a visual language that expresses the ineffable, that is, the realms that defy a verbal articulation. The second route seeks to decipher the intuitive, deliberate, or combined processes that the artist has followed to complete a painting. There is of course a third route that acknowledges both avenues and seeks to reconcile them at certain levels.
Paul Roorda’s abstract works in Seeing Through Walls are particular in the sense that they depend on three different sources for the composition of their abstraction. The first one is based on weather and other conditions acting on the surfaces of walls he has singled out around the world as witness bearers to climate change. This first layer is unplanned, chaotic and occurs naturally. This initial layer is then overlaid by a second layer of abstraction that results from the photographing of the walls – a process that abstracts, or takes away, the images from their original context. The source of the final abstractive layer is paradoxical in that the “representational” or realistic painting of the image on the photograph results in the abstract works we see in the series. Each one of the creative stages imbues the work with the creative impulses of Roorda, acting in concert with the subject matter and arriving to the production of a co-created work.
From the moment the viewer encounters the paintings, they can relate to an abstract landscape determined by the various degrees of prominence of a clearly identifiable horizon line. The horizon focuses the attention on far away distances that yield to the image of expansive and ever-deepening skies. The works take on additional depth of meaning as the initial impressions are then led by the awareness of Paul Roorda’s creative process. The paintings become windows to different parts of the world and expose the viewer to the effects of those various local elements, weather, minerals, pollution, the passage of time.
Encountering Paul Roorda’s works allows the viewer to engage with the levels of complexity generated by the tension between the visible abstraction and the representational nature of the works. The tension nevertheless yields atmospheric environments, sometimes turbulent, sometimes ethereal, and yet other times very structured, with allusions to the concreteness and solidity of stone offering a support to the suggestions of open, boundless landscapes. In some cases, such as in Himare I and II, the landscape itself alludes to the impermanence of stone.
Seeing Through Walls presents a beauty that exposes an anxious turbulence that does not quite yet find a resolution. The quiet beauty and turbulence of the works can be construed as calls to collective and immediate action required to create a different outcome in our world.
The title of the exhibition, Seeing Through Walls has a twofold sense. In the figurative sense, seeing the effect of weather and climate change on the walls and therefore inferring human influence; and in the literal sense, encountering an exercise to access other levels of awareness by using the paintings as a means to access other realities.
Through his paintings, Paul Roorda presents portals, meditative conduits to already present, yet transcendent realities. He acts as a guide to areas beyond the physical and the immediately perceived as one moves beyond the calls for awareness of the effects of climate change and human activity.
The transcendent qualities derive from concentrating on an environment that is understood as existing in two dimensions yet pointing to boundless space. This allows for our individual awareness to turn inwards and go beyond physical immediacy in line with other methods of meditation.
Constant tension between the two-dimensional and the boundless offers the viewer an opportunity to explore inner realities that have latently existed until the viewer actualizes them by finding comfort in discovering and inhabiting them.
The paintings in Seeing Through Walls contain a promise. Clouds will clear, smoke will dissipate, dust will settle. The vision will eventually be revealed and the viewer will play the central role in the creation of what lies beyond.
